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from Expressen.seby Linus Sunnerviktranslated into English by Mauro Cappiello

Sweden was the best - in the world's largest sports. A dozen Swedes spurred each other to success - and two guys from Småland ruled the world. The talents of that era now explain the recipe behind the "miracle year 1988".

Stefan Edberg, Wimbledon 1988 champion

- It was quite unique, says Stefan Edberg.

A chapter in the Swedish sports history, best known as the Swedish tennis miracle.

With Björn Borg, interest for tennis exploded in Sweden, and a decade later turned into a huge success. Ranking-wise, the Swedes conquered the world in the mid-1980s.

But the year 1988 was the zenith moment of everything.

Two guys from Småland - Mats Wilander and Stefan Edberg - won the world's four major tournaments. A feat that has never been repeated in tennis history afterwards.

- It was something fantastic for me and Mats, and for everyone involved. Something we would never experience again. It was absolutely amazing, says Edberg.

On March 8th in Jönköping, a Swedish town in the region of Småland two hours by car from Västervik, the local tennis club will celebrate the World Tennis Day with a Mini Challenger event that will field 24 teams of juniors aged 14-18, representing as many Swedish tennis clubs.

Today Stefan Edberg turns 50 years old. Big and hearty congratulations! But what else should I write that has not already been written or said about the sympathetic Västervik Son?

Six Grand Slam titles in singles, three in doubles, a total of 41 singles and 18 doubles titles, three Davis Cup victories, the Olympic bronze and 72 weeks as world number one.

That's a mini summary of his fabulous career that I have been privileged to follow as a journalist.

It started back in the early 1980s, when Stefan's father Bengt was kind enough to call the Barometern newspaper in Kalmar to tell his kid had played and how it had gone.

Usually it went well. Very well.

But Stefan himself was not so talkative. He hasn't been in recent years, either.

As a star in the spotlight in one of the world's largest sports, he managed to preserve his reclusive ways. Similarly, after the end of his career. When other former top players criticized - sometimes very loudly - their successors, Stefan kept quiet.

Sure, once you've sometimes wished that he would have burst in public, for example on how things have been managed in Swedish tennis over the years, but no, we will probably never get to experience the day when Stefan Edberg will go out and criticize someone.

"I'm at home right now, but there will be no big party today. There was a little surprise after midnight here and I was celebrated by friends and acquaintances.”

The journalist also asked him to make an assessment of his life so far: "A lot has happened during these 50 years, - replied Stefan. - Looking back, I've had 50 good years in every way and above all I have experienced a lot of tennis. I have been with my wife for 30 years and feel healthy. I am absolutely satisfied and have nothing to complain about."

Today, January 19th, Stefan turns 50 years old and we have prepared a very special birthday wish for him!

As our HOT SHOT!!! video section just reached its 50th issue target, we thought it would be a nice idea to collect in only one clip all those 50 great shots played by Stefan in many different matches all throughout his career.

So, this Golden Anniversary, that we hope you will recall with us sharing and retweeting this video on your favourite social channels, is also the occasion to celebrate the great work of research in our archive and on the web we have done since April 2013, when we first decided to start a section of our video gallery dedicated to the shots of magic Stefan Edberg has delighted us all with for so many years.

"När vi var bäst", the book on the Golden Age of Swedish tennis published in October 2014, will be translated into Italian.

The news was given us by Ulf Roosvald, author with Mats Holm of the volume that was widely appreciated by critics and became a best seller in few months in Sweden.

The Italian version will be edited by Add Editore, an independent publishing house born in Turin in 2010.

So Italy will be the first country (and we hope not the only one) to read the work translated with the title "Game, set, match. Borg, Edberg e Wilander, la Svezia del grande tennis". It will be available in bookshops from the end of next May.

A little bit later than usual, here’s our Happy New Year post, as we start our first season after the end of the partnership between Stefan Edberg and Roger Federer.

We had taken a short break from the website, like we had done several times last year, in the periods when our famous duo was away from the spotlight. These two years of Team Fedberg have been a fantastic moment of growth for our project, but also a very demanding experience for us, who were used to running a website connected to current news to a much smaller extent. Edberg was tired of traveling, we were overwhelmed by fresh information, as we were trained to look back to the past, rather than to follow the present.

We have done our best to keep you up-to-date with anything done by Edberg and Federer together and with anything said on them on the web. We have gone deep into the news, creating specials, videos, photo stories and the outcome of this effort is now an almost day-by-day diary of these two years, collecting more than 200 posts that are meant to become even more.

Former Wimbledon referee and supervisor Alan Mills officially retired from tennis this month, with a ceremony at the Royal Albert Hall during the London stage of the ATP Champions Tour.

On that occasion, he was a special guest of The Tennis Podcast for their final release of 2015.

Presenter David Law asked him to single out a player that impressed him the most throughout his long journey in the world of tennis. Mr Mills chose Rod Laver as a player to watch and Stefan Edberg and Pat Rafter for their attitude.

In particular, he wanted to recall an episode concerning Stefan, happened 25 years ago in Miami, that once again reminds us all of how great a sportsman the Swede is.